FreeBSD Man Pages

ps(1) User Commands ps(1)
NAME
ps - report process status
SYNOPSISps [-aAcdefjlLPy] [-ggrplist] [-nnamelist] [-oformat]... [-ppro-clist] [-ssidlist] [-tterm] [-uuidlist] [-Uuidlist] [-Ggidlist]
DESCRIPTION
The ps command prints information about active processes. Without
options, ps prints information about processes that have the same
effective user ID and the same controlling terminal as the invoker. The
output contains only the process ID, terminal identifier, cumulative
execution time, and the command name. Otherwise, the information that
is displayed is controlled by the options.
Some options accept lists as arguments. Items in a list can be either
separated by commas or else enclosed in quotes and separated by commas
or spaces. Values for proclist and grplist must be numeric.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-a Lists information about all processes most frequently requested:
all those except session leaders and processes not associated
with a terminal.
-A Lists information for all processes. Identical to -e, below.
-c Prints information in a format that reflects scheduler properties
as described in priocntl(1). The -c option affects the output of
the -f and -l options, as described below.
-d Lists information about all processes except session leaders.
-e Lists information about every process now running.
-f Generates a full listing. (See below for significance of columns
in a full listing.)
-ggrplist
Lists only process data whose group leader's ID number(s) appears
in grplist. (A group leader is a process whose process ID number
is identical to its process group ID number.)
-Ggidlist
Lists information for processes whose real group ID numbers are
given in gidlist. The gidlist must be a single argument in the
form of a blank- or comma-separated list.
-j Prints session ID and process group ID.
-l Generates a long listing. (See below.)
-L Prints information about each light weight process (lwp) in each
selected process. (See below.)
-nnamelist
Specifies the name of an alternative system namelist file in
place of the default. This option is accepted for compatibility,
but is ignored.
-oformat
Prints information according to the format specification given in
format. This is fully described in DISPLAYFORMATS. Multiple -o
options can be specified; the format specification will be inter-
preted as the space-character-separated concatenation of all the
format option-arguments.
-ps proclist
Lists only process data whose process ID numbers are given in
proclist.
-P Prints the number of the processor to which the process or lwp is
bound, if any, under an additional column header, PSR.
-ssidlist
Lists information on all session leaders whose IDs appear in
sidlist.
-tterm
Lists only process data associated with term. Terminal identi-
fiers are specified as a device file name, and an identifier. For
example, term/a, or pts/0.
-uuidlist
Lists only process data whose effective user ID number or login
name is given in uidlist. In the listing, the numerical user ID
will be printed unless you give the -f option, which prints the
login name.
-Uuidlist
Lists information for processes whose real user ID numbers or
login names are given in uidlist. The uidlist must be a single
argument in the form of a blank- or comma-separated list.
-y Under a long listing (-l), omits the obsolete F and ADDR columns
and includes an RSS column to report the resident set size of the
process. Under the -y option, both RSS and SZ (see below) will be
reported in units of kilobytes instead of pages.
Many of the options shown are used to select processes to list. If any
are specified, the default list will be ignored and ps will select the
processes represented by the inclusive OR of all the selection-criteria
options.
DISPLAY FORMATS
Under the -f option, ps tries to determine the command name and argu-
ments given when the process was created by examining the user block.
Failing this, the command name is printed, as it would have appeared
without the -f option, in square brackets.
The column headings and the meaning of the columns in a ps listing are
given below; the letters f and l indicate the option (full or long,
respectively) that causes the corresponding heading to appear; all
means that the heading always appears. Note: These two options deter-
mine only what information is provided for a process; they do not
determine which processes will be listed.
F (l)
Flags (hexadecimal and additive) associated with the process.
These flags are available for historical purposes; no meaning
should be currently ascribed to them.
S (l) The state of the process:
O Process is running on a processor.
S Sleeping: process is waiting for an event to complete.
R Runnable: process is on run queue.
Z Zombie state: process terminated and parent not waiting.
T Process is stopped, either by a job control signal or
because it is being traced.
UID (f,l)
The effective user ID number of the process (the login name is
printed under the -f option).
PID (all)
The process ID of the process (this datum is necessary in order
to kill a process).
PPID (f,l)
The process ID of the parent process.
C (f,l)
Processor utilization for scheduling (obsolete). Not printed when
the -c option is used.
CLS (f,l)
Scheduling class. Printed only when the -c option is used.
PRI (l)
The priority of the process. Without the -c option, higher num-
bers mean lower priority. With the -c option, higher numbers mean
higher priority.
NI (l)
Nice value, used in priority computation. Not printed when the -c
option is used. Only processes in the certain scheduling classes
have a nice value.
ADDR (l)
The memory address of the process.
SZ (l)
The total size of the process in virtual memory, including all
mapped files and devices, in pages. See pagesize(1).
WCHAN (l)
The address of an event for which the process is sleeping (if
blank, the process is running).
STIME (f)
The starting time of the process, given in hours, minutes, and
seconds. (A process begun more than twenty-four hours before the
ps inquiry is executed is given in months and days.)
TTY (all)
The controlling terminal for the process (the message, ?, is
printed when there is no controlling terminal).
TIME (all)
The cumulative execution time for the process.
CMD (all)
The command name (the full command name and its arguments, up to
a limit of 80 characters, are printed under the -f option).
The following two additional columns are printed when the -j option is
specified:
PGID The process ID of the process group leader.
SID The process ID of the session leader.
The following two additional columns are printed when the -L option is
specified:
LWP The lwp ID of the lwp being reported.
NLWP The number of lwps in the process (if -f is also specified).
Under the -L option, one line is printed for each lwp in the process
and the time-reporting fields STIME and TIME show the values for the
lwp, not the process. A traditional single-threaded process contains
only one lwp.
A process that has exited and has a parent, but has not yet been waited
for by the parent, is marked <defunct>.
-oformat
The -o option allows the output format to be specified under user con-
trol.
The format specification must be a list of names presented as a single
argument, blank- or comma-separated. Each variable has a default
header. The default header can be overridden by appending an equals
sign and the new text of the header. The rest of the characters in the
argument will be used as the header text. The fields specified will be
written in the order specified on the command line, and should be
arranged in columns in the output. The field widths will be selected by
the system to be at least as wide as the header text (default or over-
ridden value). If the header text is null, such as -ouser=, the field
width will be at least as wide as the default header text. If all
header text fields are null, no header line will be written.
The following names are recognized in the POSIX locale:
user The effective user ID of the process. This will be the textual
user ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
ruser The real user ID of the process. This will be the textual user
ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a deci-
mal representation otherwise.
group The effective group ID of the process. This will be the textual
group ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a
decimal representation otherwise.
rgroup
The real group ID of the process. This will be the textual group
ID, if it can be obtained and the field width permits, or a deci-
mal representation otherwise.
pid The decimal value of the process ID.
ppid The decimal value of the parent process ID.
pgid The decimal value of the process group ID.pcpu The ratio of CPU time used recently to CPU time available in the
same period, expressed as a percentage. The meaning of
``recently'' in this context is unspecified. The CPU time avail-
able is determined in an unspecified manner.
vsz The total size of the process in virtual memory, in kilobytes.
nice The decimal value of the system scheduling priority of the
process. See nice(1).
etime In the POSIX locale, the elapsed time since the process was
started, in the form:
[[dd-]hh:]mm:ss
where
dd is the number of days
hh is the number of hours
mm is the number of minutes
ss is the number of seconds
The dd field will be a decimal integer. The hh, mm and ss fields
will be two-digit decimal integers padded on the left with zeros.
time In the POSIX locale, the cumulative CPU time of the process in
the form:
[dd-]hh:mm:ss
The dd, hh, mm, and ss fields will be as described in the etime
specifier.
tty The name of the controlling terminal of the process (if any) in
the same format used by the who(1) command.
comm The name of the command being executed (argv[0] value) as a
string.
args The command with all its arguments as a string. The implementa-
tion may truncate this value to the field width; it is implemen-
tation-dependent whether any further truncation occurs. It is
unspecified whether the string represented is a version of the
argument list as it was passed to the command when it started, or
is a version of the arguments as they may have been modified by
the application. Applications cannot depend on being able to mod-
ify their argument list and having that modification be reflected
in the output of ps. The Solaris implementation limits the string
to 80 bytes; the string is the version of the argument list as it
was passed to the command when it started.
The following names are recognized in the Solaris implementation:
f Flags (hexadecimal and additive) associated with the process.
s The state of the process.
c Processor utilization for scheduling (obsolete).
uid The effective user ID number of the process as a decimal integer.
ru+id The real user ID number of the process as a decimal integer.
gid The effective group ID number of the process as a decimal inte-
ger.
rgid The real group ID number of the process as a decimal integer.
projid
The project ID number of the process as a decimal integer.
project
The project ID of the process as a textual value if that value
can be obtained; otherwise as a decimal integer.
sid The process ID of the session leader.
taskid
The task ID of the process.
class The scheduling class of the process.
pri The priority of the process. Higher numbers mean higher priority.
opri The obsolete priority of the process. Lower numbers mean higher
priority.
lwp The decimal value of the lwp ID. Requesting this formatting
option causes one line to be printed for each lwp in the process.
nlwp The number of lwps in the process.
psr The number of the processor to which the process or lwp is bound.
pset The ID of the processor set to which the process or lwp is
bound.
addr The memory address of the process.
osz The total size of the process in virtual memory, in pages.
wchan The address of an event for which the process is sleeping (if -,
the process is running).
stime The starting time or date of the process, printed with no blanks.
rss The resident set size of the process, in kilobytes.
pmem The ratio of the process's resident set size to the physical mem-
ory on the machine, expressed as a percentage.
fname The first 8 bytes of the base name of the process's executable
file.
Only comm and args are allowed to contain blank characters; all others,
including the Solaris implementation variables, are not.
The following table specifies the default header to be used in the
POSIX locale corresponding to each format specifier.
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|Format Default |Format Default |
|Specifier Header |Specifier Header |
|args COMMAND |ppid PPID |
|comm COMMAND |rgroup RGROUP |
|etime ELAPSED |ruser RUSER |
|group GROUP |time TIME |
|nice NI |tty TT |
|pcpu %CPU |user USER |
|pgid PGID |vsz VSZ |
|pid PID | |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
The following table lists the Solaris implementation format specifiers
and the default header used with each.
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
|Format Default |Format Default |
|Specifier Header |Specifier Header |
|addr ADDR |projid PROJID |
|c C |project PROJECT |
|class CLS |psr PSR |
|f F |rgid RGID |
|fname COMMAND |rss RSS |
|gid GID |ruid RUID |
|lwp LWP |s S |
|nlwp NLWP |sid SID |
|opri PRI |stime STIME |
|osz SZ |taskid TASKID |
|pmem %MEM |uid UID |
|pri PRI |wchan WCHAN |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
EXAMPLESExample1:Anexampleofthepscommand
The command:
example% ps-ouser,pid,ppid=MOM-oargs
writes the following in the POSIX locale:
USER PID MOM COMMAND
helene 34 12 ps -o uid,pid,ppid=MOM -o args
The contents of the COMMAND field need not be the same due to possible
truncation.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of ps: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_TIME, and
NLSPATH.
COLUMNS
Override the system-selected horizontal screen size, used to
determine the number of text columns to display.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
FILES/dev/pts/*/dev/term/*
terminal (``tty'') names searcher files
/etc/passwdUID information supplier
/proc/*
process control files
/tmp/ps_data
internal data structure
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWcsu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|CSI |Enabled (see USAGE) |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSOkill(1), nice(1), pagesize(1), pgrep(1), priocntl(1), who(1),
getty(1M), proc(4), ttysrch(4), attributes(5), environ(5)NOTES
Things can change while ps is running. The snapshot it gives is true
only for a split-second, and it may not be accurate by the time you see
it. Some data printed for defunct processes is irrelevant.
If no options to select processes are specified, ps will report all
processes associated with the controlling terminal. If there is no con-
trolling terminal, there will be no report other than the header.
ps -ef or ps -ostime may not report the actual start of a tty login
session, but rather an earlier time, when a getty was last respawned on
the tty line.
ps is CSI-enabled except for login names (usernames).
SunOS 5.9 10 Dec 2001 ps(1)